DOTA 2 International – $18 Million Dollar Prize Pool

August 8th marks the end of the 2015 edition of The International, an annual eSports Dota 2 championship tournament. One team will win the first place prize pool of over $6 million dollars, out of a total $18 million prize pool. There are currently five teams playing today: LGD Gaming vs. Virtus Pro, CDEC Gaming vs. Evil Geniuses, and the winner of the LGD/VP vs. Vici Gaming. The winner from this set of teams will battle the winner of CDEC vs. EG for first place.

One eliminated team, Team Secret, were clearly a fan favorite expected to sweep the competition away. The team is made up of all-star players, but they squandered an early lead that led to victory by their opponents, Virtus Pro. With 1 winning game under each of their belts, they both went back to their roots for the final battle. However, careless mistakes by Team Secret ultimately let to VP’s control and victory.

This event, held at the KeyArena in Seattle, is powered by NVIDIA. They worked closely with Maingear, a gaming computer manufacturer, to create the setup for the players this year. Maingear CEO stated that they designed these gaming systems with low-latency at the front of their minds, even though the game does not require any demanding hardware. Their budget was also blown because they wanted to ensure that absolutely nothing could go wrong during the competition.